Androidifying

The Nextbook Ares Android tablet line will see a new arrival at CES 2016 this January. Nextbook has announced that the Ares 11A will be an 11.6” ‘2-in1 model’ that will feature a detachable keyboard. The device will run Lollipop out of the box and sports 2 gigs of RAM strapped to a quad-core Intel Atom x5-Z8300 processor. The best part about it? The price tag is only $219.99. See also: Best Android tablets (December 2015) 218 This successor to the Ares 11 is looking to position itself as combination work-and-play tool. The affordable price and mid-range specs make it seem like an excellent pick for a secondary device, and the detachable keyboard means you can actually use this Android tablet to get some serious work done. The keyboard will also serve the role of expanding the tablet’s capabilities by bringing aboard 2 USB ports. The tablet itself will have a miniHDMI, a micro USB, and a microSD port. As far as storage space is concerned, the Ares 11A will have 64GB of onboard st

We’ve heard a few leaks and rumors regarding Samsung’s Galaxy S7 , but we haven’t heard much about the upcoming LG G5 . At least until now, that is. According to popular leaker Evan Blass (aka @evleaks ) writing for  VentureBeat , the LG G5 will sport a number of interesting design changes that we didn’t really expect would be featured on LG’s first 2016 flagship. The secondary ticker display is now a staple in LG's flagship lineup Sourcing people familiar with the matter, the LG G5 will supposedly sport a metal chassis that borrows elements from past G-series devices as well as V10 , the company’s most recent flagship. It’ll come with a 5.3-inch display with a Quad HD resolution, as well as a secondary “ticker” display, similar to what was featured on the V10.  VentureBeat says the secondary display will be one of LG’s headline features across its 2016 lineup. It’ll also supposedly be powered by the brand new Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, along with 3 gigabytes of RAM

Shutterstock In an internal document distributed to AT&T employees this morning, the carrier revealed that it would be ending 2-year contracts beginning January 8th. That means that if you want a new phone on an AT&T plan, you’re going to have to pay for the device up front or set up a financing arrangement. The memo reads as follows: Effective January 8, 2016, AT&T will launch a pricing simplification effort for device purchase options and pricing plans across all channels. Simplify Device Purchase Options – AT&T Next and no-commitment (full-retail price) will become the only smartphone purchase options available for new and existing Consumer, standard Individual Responsibility Users (IRU). – AT&T will introduce installment plans for Quick Messaging devices (QMD) and Basic devices. Installment plans and no-commitment (full-retail price) will become the only purchase option for new and existing Consumer, standard Individual Responsibility Users (IRU). See a

It’s one of the biggest questions around here: “when is my phone getting Android 6.0 Marshmallow?”. We all want to have the latest and greatest Android software around, but we can often be guilty of not even knowing what these updates bring to the table. In the Case of Marshmallow, the change was pretty significant when compared to Lollipop. Plenty of new features and capabilities have been introduced, and our goal is to tell you all about the hottest new goodies in this post. Shall we get started? See also: Android 6.0 Marshmallow updates roundup – December 18, 2015 90 New app drawer This will probably be one of the most obvious changes to the UI you will find. The new app drawer dumps horizontal scrolling, which has been around since Jelly Bean first came into the picture. The new app drawer scrolls vertically, which does seem to speed up navigation and gets you to your apps quicker. In addition, users can now grab the scroll bar on the right side and jump through letters to

Facebook is no stranger to switching things up every now and then, especially when it comes to its mobile applications for Android and iOS. It looks like a few users have been experiencing some of these changeups as of late, as Facebook appears to be testing a new version of its News Feed that will more effectively give you the information you want to see at the appropriate times. According to the screenshots taken by Jason Stein , Facebook looks to be testing multiple, topic-based News Feeds in its mobile apps. The new News Feeds will work similar to the way Facebook’s (iOS only) Paper app works, where it will sort posts from people and pages in different sections. There will still be a traditional News Feed section, but it will supposedly be accompanied by secondary feeds, such as “Style”, “Headlines” and “Travel.” Facebook is adding customizable interest-based feeds. A newspaper made up of all the world’s newspapers. http://pic.twitter.com/Ll7pib6Mb5 — Jason Stein (@jasonwstei

We’ll no doubt be seeing tons of Internet of Things (IoT) related gadgets and systems at CES 2016 , and today we can add another one to the list. LG has just unveiled its new SmartThinQ Hub, which will serve as a gateway to smart sensors and other connected appliances in the home. It’ll have the ability to display reminders from personal calendars, stream music with its built-in speaker and more. You can control the SmartThinQ Hub with the 3.5-inch LCD display on the top of the device. LG also plans to release a smartphone app so that you can control it right from your mobile device. LG is taking a page out of Amazon's book with the SmartThinQ Hub Taking a look at the product images attached above, you might notice this new hub looks a lot like Amazon’s Echo  connected speaker, only with a touchscreen display. One could argue this hub doesn’t need a display, seeing as how most of the interactions users will make with it will be through the smartphone application. On the othe

We see MicroSD cards and other memory products discounted pretty regularly on Amazon, but it’s not often we see these products discounted by almost 80%. Today we have a pretty great group of deals for you, as various Transcend MicroSD cards, USB 3.0 Flash Drives and other memory products are on sale up to 77% off. These are all part of Amazon’s Deal of the Day, so if you’re interested in anything listed below, you’ll want to grab them sooner rather than later. For starters, Amazon has discounted Transcend MicroSD cards in 64 and 128GB variants up to 72% off. Both of the storage options also come with an adapter, which we don’t see often in these discounts. Transcend 64GB MicroSDXC Class10 UHS-1 Memory Card with Adapter 45 MB/s – $13.99 (72% off) Transcend 128GB MicroSDXC Class10 UHS-1 Memory Card with Adapter 45 MB/s – $42.99 (60% off) If you’re looking for something more suited for your camera, a number of Transcend Flash Memory Cards are on sale, up to 69% off. Transcend 64G